He was an important contributor to the
De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by
Theo van Doesburg. Despite being well-known, often-parodied
and even trivialized, Mondrian's paintings exhibit a complexity
that belies their apparent simplicity. He is best known for his
non-representational paintings that he called
compositions, consisting of rectangular forms of red,
yellow, blue or black, separated by thick, black rectilinear
lines. They are the result of a stylistic evolution that
occurred over the course of nearly 30 years and continued beyond
that point to the end of his life.

The Netherlands 1872–1912

He began his career as a teacher in
primary education, but while teaching he also practiced
painting. Most of his work from this period is
naturalistic or
impressionistic, consisting largely of
landscapes. These pastoral images of his native Holland
depict
windmills, fields, and
rivers, initially in the Dutch Impressionist manner of
The
Hague School and then in a variety of styles and
techniques documenting his search for a personal voice. These
paintings are most definitely representational, and illustrate
the influence that various artistic movements had on Mondrian,
including
pointillism and the vivid colors of
fauvism.

On display in
The Hague's
Gemeentemuseum are a number of paintings from this period,
including such post-impressionist works as "The Red Mill" and
"Trees in Moonlight". Another painting, "Avond" ("Evening") (1908),
a scene of haystacks in a field at dusk, even augurs future
developments by using a palette consisting almost entirely of
red, yellow and blue. Although it is in no sense abstract,
"Avond" is the earliest of Mondrian's works to emphasize the
primary colors.

The earliest paintings that show an inkling of the
abstraction to come are a series of canvases from 1905 to 1908,
which depict dim scenes of indistinct trees and houses with
reflections in still water that make them appear almost like
Rorschach ink blots. However, although the end result leads
the viewer to begin emphasizing the forms over the content,
these paintings are still firmly rooted in nature, and it is
only the knowledge of Mondrian's later achievements that leads
one to search for the roots of his future abstraction in these
works. 1872-1944 Mondrian's art was always intimately related to
his spiritual and philosophical studies. 1908, he became
interested in the
theosophical movement launched by
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the late
19th century. Blavatsky believed that it was possible to
attain a knowledge of nature more profound than that provided by
empirical means, and much of Mondrian's work for the rest of his
life was inspired by his search for that spiritual knowledge.

Mondrian and his later work were deeply influenced by the
1911
Moderne Kunstkring exhibition of
Cubism in
Amsterdam. His search for simplification is shown in two
versions of "stilleven met gemberpot" ("still life with ginger
pot"). The 1911 version[1]
is Cubist, in the 1912 version[2]
it is reduced to a round shape with
triangles and
rectangles.

He painted a fake tulip white because he banned the colour
green from being in his house.

Paris 1912–1914

1912, Mondrian moved to
Paris
and changed his name (dropping an 'a' from Mondriaan) to
emphasize his departure from life in the artistic backwater of
Holland. From this point on, he signed his work as "Mondrian"[3].
While in Paris, the influence of the Cubism of
Picasso and
Braque appeared almost immediately in Mondrian's work.
Paintings such as "The Sea" (1912) and his various studies of
trees from that year still contain a measure of but they are
increasingly dominated by the geometric shapes and interlocking
planes commonly found in
Cubism. However, while Mondrian was eager to absorb the
Cubist influence into his work, it seems clear that he saw
Cubism as a road leading to an end, rather than an end.

Netherlands 1914–1919

Unlike the Cubists, Mondrian was still attempting to
reconcile his painting with his spiritual pursuits, and in 1913,
he began to fuse his art and his theosophical studies into a
theory that signaled his final break from representational
painting.
World War I began while Mondrian was visiting home in 1914,
and he was forced to remain in the Netherlands for the duration
of the conflict. During this period, Mondrian stayed at the
Laren artist's colony, there meeting
Bart van der Leck and
Theo van Doesburg, both artists undergoing their own
personal journeys toward abstraction at the time. Van der Leck's
use of only primary colors in his art greatly influenced
Mondrian. With Van Doesburg, Mondrian founded "De
Stijl" ("The Style"), a journal of De Stijl group in which
he published his first essays defining his theory, for which he
adopted the term
neoplasticism.

Mondrian published “De Nieuwe Beelding in de Schilderkunst”
(“The New Plastic in Painting”) in twelve installments during
1917
and
1918. This was his first major attempt to express his
artistic theory in writing. However, Mondrian's best and most
often-quoted expression of this theory comes from a letter he
wrote to H.P. Bremmer in
1914:

Paris 1919–1938

When the war ended in 1919, Mondrian returned to France,
where he would remain until 1938. Immersed in the crucible of
artistic innovation that was post-war Paris, he flourished in an
atmosphere of intellectual freedom that enabled him to
courageously embrace an art of pure abstraction for the rest of
his life. Mondrian began producing grid-based paintings in late
1919, and in 1920, the style for which he came to be renowned
began to appear.

In the early paintings of this style, such as "Composition A"
(1920) and "Composition B" (1920), the lines delineating the
rectangular forms are relatively thin, and they are gray, not
black. The lines also tend to fade as they approach the edge of
the painting, rather than stopping abruptly. The forms
themselves, smaller and more numerous than in later paintings,
are filled with primary colors, black, or gray, and nearly all
of them are colored; only a few are left white.

Beginning late 1920 and 1921, Mondrian's paintings arrive at
what are their definitive and mature form to casual observers.
Thick black lines now separate the forms, which are larger and
fewer in number, and more of them are left white than was
previously the case. This was not the culmination of his
artistic evolution, however. Although the refinements became
more subtle, Mondrian's work continued to evolve during his
years in Paris.

In the 1921 paintings, many of the black lines (but not all
of them) stop short at a seemingly arbitrary distance from the
edge of the canvas, although the divisions between the
rectangular forms remain intact. Here too, the rectangular forms
are still mostly colored. As the years passed and Mondrian's
work evolved further, he began extending all of the lines to the
edges of the canvas, and he also began to use fewer and fewer
colored forms, favoring white instead.

These tendencies are particularly obvious in the “lozenge”
works that Mondrian began producing with regularity in the
mid-1920s. The lozenge paintings are square canvases tilted 45
degrees, so that they hang in a diamond shape. Typical of these
is "Schilderij No. 1: Lozenge With Two Lines and Blue" (1926),
also known as "Composition With Blue" and "Composition in White
and Blue," which is currently on display at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art. One of the most minimal of
Mondrian's canvases, this painting consists only of two black,
perpendicular lines and a small triangular form, colored blue.
The lines extend all the way to the edges of the canvas, almost
giving the impression that the painting is a fragment of a
larger work.

Although one is hampered by the glass protecting the
painting, and by the toll that age and handling have obviously
taken on the canvas, a close examination of this painting begins
to reveal something of the artist's method. Mondrian's paintings
are not composed of perfectly flat planes of color, as one might
expect. Brush strokes are evident throughout, although they are
subtle, and the artist appears to have used different techniques
for the various elements.

The black lines are the flattest elements, with the least
amount of depth. The colored forms have the most obvious brush
strokes, all running in one direction. Most interesting,
however, are the white forms, which clearly have been painted in
layers, using brush strokes running in different directions.
This generates a greater sense of depth in the white forms, as
though they are overwhelming the lines and the colors, which
indeed they were, as Mondrian's paintings of this period came to
be increasingly dominated by white space.

"Schilderij No. 1" can be said to represent the most extreme
extent of Mondrian's minimalism. As the years progressed, lines
began to take precedence over forms in his painting. In the
1930s,
he began to use thinner lines and double lines more frequently,
punctuated with a few small colored forms, if any at all. Double
lines particularly excited Mondrian, for he believed they
offered his paintings a new dynamism which he was eager to
explore.

London and New York 1938–1944

September 1938, Mondrian left Paris in the face of advancing
fascism and moved to
London. After the Netherlands were invaded and Paris fell in
1940, he left London for
New York City, where he would remain until his death. Some
of Mondrian's later works are difficult to place in terms of his
artistic development, because there were quite a few canvases
that he began in Paris or London, which he only completed months
or years later in New York. However, the finished works from
this later period demonstrate an unprecedented busyness, with
more lines than any of his work since the 1920s, placed in an
overlapping manner that is almost cartographical in appearance.
He spent many long hours painting on his own till his hands
blistered and he sometimes cried or made himself sick.

Mondrian produced "Lozenge Composition With Four Yellow
Lines" (1933), a simple painting that introduced what for him
was a shocking innovation: thick, colored lines instead of black
ones. After that one painting, this practice remained dormant in
Mondrian's work until he arrived in New York, at which time he
began to embrace it with abandon. In some examples of this new
direction, such as "Composition" (1938) / "Place de la Concorde"
(1943), he appears to have taken unfinished black-line paintings
from Paris and completed them in New York by adding short
perpendicular lines of different colors, running between the
longer black lines, or from a black line to the edge of the
canvas. The newly-colored areas are thick, almost bridging the
gap between lines and forms, and it is startling to see color in
a Mondrian painting that is unbounded by black. Other works mix
long lines of red amidst the familiar black lines, creating a
new sense of depth by the addition of a colored layer on top of
the black one.

The new canvases that Mondrian began in New York are even
more startling, and indicate the beginning of a new idiom that
was unfortunately cut short by the artist's death. "New York
City" (1942) is a complex lattice of red, blue, and yellow
lines, occasionally interlacing to create a greater sense of
depth than ever before. An unfinished 1941 version of this work
uses strips of painted paper tape, which the artist could
rearrange at will to experiment with different designs.

His painting "Broadway
Boogie-Woogie" (1942–43) at
The Museum of Modern Art in New York City was highly
influential in the school of
abstract geometric painting. The piece is made up of a
number of shimmering squares of bright color that leap from the
canvas, then appear to shimmer, drawing you into those neon
lights. In this painting and the unfinished "Victory
Boogie Woogie" (1942-44), Mondrian replaced former solid
lines with lines created from small adjoining rectangles of
color, created in part by using small pieces of paper tape in
various colors. Larger unbounded rectangles of color punctuate
the design, some with smaller concentric rectangles inside them.
While Mondrian's works of the 1920s and 1930s tend to have an
almost scientific austerity about them, these are bright, lively
paintings, reflecting the upbeat music that inspired them and
the city in which they were made.

Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942-1943).

Mondrian wrote, on a postcard to art historian James Johnson
Sweeney, planner of a retrospective exhibition of the artist's
works at The Museum of Modern Art in New York: "Only now [in
1943], I become conscious that my work in black, white, and
little color planes has been merely 'drawing' in oil color. In
drawing, the lines are the principal means of expression; in
painting, the color planes. In painting, however, the lines are
absorbed by the color planes; but the limitation of the planes
show themselves as lines and conserve their great value." In
these final works, the forms have indeed usurped the role of the
lines, opening another new door for Mondrian's development as an
abstractionist. The "Boogie-Woogie" paintings were clearly more
of a revolutionary change than an evolutionary one, representing
the most profound development in Mondrian's work since his
abandonment of representational art in 1913. Unfortunately, we
were to have only a glimpse of this new innovation.

The apparent simplicity of Mondrian's best-known works is
deceptive. Study of Mondrian's neoplastic compositions makes it
clear that they are utterly original. The effects that he
generated are not easily reproduced. They were the culmination
of a decades-long conceptual journey and experimentation with
many different styles and movements. His oft-emulated
reductionist style continues to inspire the art, fashion,
advertising and design worlds. Although he was a
fine artist, rather than a
commercial artist, Mondrian is considered the father of
advertising design, due to the widespread and continued
adoption of his grid style as a basic structure of
graphic-design layout.

Piet Mondrian died of
pneumonia and was interred in the
Cypress Hills Cemetery in
Brooklyn, New York.

Trivia

Molly Ringwald's character (Andie) in "Pretty in Pink"
prominently displays three Mondrian paintings in her room.

In the opening sequence of the Green Acres, there is a
Mondrian visible in the New York Apartment.

Along with Klee and Kandinsky, Piet Modrian was one of the
largest inspirations to the early pointillistic musical
aesthetic of
serialist composer
Pierre Boulez.